Indian govt requests for online user data continues to increase: Google has received a total of 2,513 requests seeking user data details from 4,401 accounts from the Indian government during July-December 2013, an increase from 2,691 requests seeking information on 4,161 accounts during Jan-June 2013 period, the company has disclosed in its Transparency report.

India ranked fourth in terms of user data requests made to Google during this period, however it came second in terms of user accounts targeted; just behind the United States.

Google complied with an alarming 66% of these requests, the second highest among other countries, preceded only by the United States where the company complied with 83% of the requests. In comparison, Google had complied with 64% of the requests during Jan-June 2013.

It’s worth noting that these requests doesn’t include content removal requests sent by the Indian government, which is disclosed separately. Last December, Google had informed that it had received a total of 163 requests to remove 714 items from Google services in the first half of 2013 and it had complied with only 20% of these requests, the lowest compliance rate ever since Google started publishing transparency reports.

Google however hasn’t disclosed any product-wise break-up for the user data requests or any specific information on which government agencies have sent these requests. This is quite strange considering that it does offer this information for takedown requests.

For instance, Google had mentioned in December that its video sharing service YouTube was the biggest target for takedown requests and more than 30% of requests sent by government agencies were on charges of defamation, followed by religious offences which accounted for about 15% of all requests sent. We hope that Google offers a similar product-wise breakup for its user data requests going forward.

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US still leads in user data requests

Overall, Google has received 27,477 user data requests seeking information on 42,648 accounts during July-December 2013, up significantly from 25,879 user data requests on 42,500 accounts during Jan-June 2013. Google complied with 64% of these requests, down from 65% compliance rate in Jan-June 2013.

United States continues to top the list of countries that requested for user data from Google for the period with 10,574 requests on 18,254 accounts and 83% compliance. This was followed by France with 2,750 requests and Germany with 2,660 requests. You can see the full list of countries here.

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